Dr. Ellen Sanders (Toni Collette) and her family are taken hostage by Duncan Carlisle (Dylan McDermott), a rogue FBI agent in CBS' 'Hostages.' / CBS

by Gary Levin, USA TODAY

by Gary Levin, USA TODAY

A surgeon about to operate on the president sees her family taken hostage. The captors' goal: Rather than heal the commander in chief, she must kill him.

The high-stakes, high-concept premise is behind Hostages, the latest CBS drama from producer Jerry Bruckheimer (CSI, Without a Trace), airing Mondays at 10 p.m. ET/PT this fall. Toni Collette plays the surgeon in the suspenseful thriller, and Dylan McDermott one of the captors, whose motive is initially unclear.

The series is a highly serialized, 15-episode limited series, unusual for CBS, but one that could return for another season. "It lets you shape an arc without having to stretch out and tap dance," says Jeffrey Nachmanoff, the show's executive producer, head writer and director, who takes a cue from cable series.

"A lot of characters we respond to on cable (are) ordinary people in extraordinary situations," like Breaking Bad's Walter White. "People in extremis who discover something different about themselves because of the situation they're thrust into."

Collette's Dr. Ellen Sanders is "a woman wearing several different hats," says the actress, who starred in Showtime's United States of Tara and the current film The Way, Way Back. "She's a mom, she's a wife, she's somewhat compromised at home, even though she's been successful at work. Here's a woman who's been toeing the line all her life and she's walking across that line and finding something about herself."

But the family won't be held hostage indefinitely. The second episode finds them "out in the world," says executive producer Rick Eid. "It's not a family trapped in a living room for an entire season." Nor does the show plan to pull punches: The family will try to escape in an early episode, and one character will be shot.

And the show is not strung out over a long period of time: "The whole season is two weeks" - about one day per episode, says McDermott, "so that also gives us leeway to do other seasons. As I say in the pilot, I'm doing bad things for a good reason, and any time you say that, you're getting a mixed bag. There's a lot of good and bad (to the character), and that's what I respond to."

Nachmanoff says the show isn't locked into a captivity story line for future seasons. Rather, the title is "a metaphor" for "how people are held hostage to who they are, the decisions they've made and the situation they're in."